


Coruscant Sunset

by devilinthedetails



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Coruscant, Friendship, Gen, Jedi Temple, mentoring, sunset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 23:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: At the Jedi Temple, Anakin and Obi-Wan watch the sunset. Oneshot set between TPM and AOTC.





	Coruscant Sunset

Coruscant Sunset

“It’s breathtaking.” Anakin felt his breath snag on an invisible hook in his throat as his Master steered him out onto one of the Temple’s innumerable balconies so they could watch the setting sun dance orange and red on the endless gray sea of durasteel that comprised Coruscant. Sunsets were beautiful enough to break his heart—to remind him of the mother he had left behind on a cruel desert world a year ago. To remind him of how she had stroked his cheek and held him tightly against her chest after she had said he couldn’t stop change any more than he could stop Tatooine’s blazing twin suns from setting. 

Ever since then, he had thought of her at sunset. He might always think of her at sunset, an unfading memory of love and loss he could never forget because he didn’t want to lose her again in his mind or his heart…

“Yes, Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s reply cut into Anakin’s thoughts. “I find Coruscant most beautiful at sunset.” 

“It makes me feel small.” It did, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was the same feeling he had once gotten from standing beside Qui-Gon and now sometimes got standing beside Obi-Wan. 

Anakin wondered if he fell off the balcony how many hundreds of stories he would pass before hitting the hard, unforgiving permacrete of the dark, dangerous underlevels. Then he realized he would fall into one of Coruscant’s countless number of speeders before he ever crashed to the city-planet’s surface. The void he gazed into wasn’t a bottomless pit after all. It only appeared that way when he thought about falling. 

“It used to make me feel small too.” Obi-Wan gave one of the faint, fleeting smiles that Anakin was learning often accompanied one of his confidences. 

“How did you stop it making you feel small?” Anakin trailed a finger along the balcony’s railing. 

“I grew.” His Master’s sense of humor was dry as the Tatooine desert, Anakin observed inwardly. 

“How many levels are there on Coruscant, Master?” On their first trip together as Master and apprentice, leaving Naboo in the stardust behind them, Obi-Wan, voice still ragged with grief for Qui-Gon, had promised to answer any questions Anakin had, and Anakin was determined to take advantage of that. 

“Five-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty-seven.” Obi-Wan responded so swiftly that Anakin couldn’t be certain whether he had memorized this data from a galactic encyclopedia or invented it spontaneously to satisfy Anakin’s ceaseless curiosity. 

“There are so many lights turning on.” Anakin gazed out at the glowing proof that millions of Coruscanti commuters were returning from their offices in the stratosphere-piercing super-skytowers to eat dinner with their families and watch assorted sports on their vidscreens. “Each light represents a person or a family. How many beings are there on Coruscant, Master?” 

“A trillion at the last census.” Obi-Wan was quick with a factual answer when Anakin had wanted wild speculation on the seemingly infinite number of lights and beings on Coruscant. Qui-Gon would have understood, Anakin thought, and then condemned himself in the next second for comparing his Master to a man they both mourned. 

“What’s a census?” Anakin’s nose wrinkled at the unfamiliar term. 

“It’s when a government collects information about their citizens such as how many citizens live in a household, how many credits those citizens earn in a year, what species those citizens are, and what the ages of those citizens are.” Obi-Wan could rapidly recite a definition in the time it took Anakin to blink. “The citizens fill out a form with this information and return it to the planetary government, Padawan.” 

“People really return this?” Anakin tilted his head dubiously. On Tatooine, such surveys would have been thrown in a trash compactor by resentful slavers, secondhand dealers, and moisture farmers. Of course, on Tatooine, the Hutts who ruled the planet cared as little for organizing a census as they did spearheading social welfare or emancipation programs. 

“They do on Coruscant.” Obi-Wan’s chuckle suggested that he knew what Anakin was thinking. It was disconcerting how his Master was sometimes capable of reading his mind like a holobook without warning. 

“They’d never on Tatooine.” Anakin shook his head in renewed wonder. 

“You’ll learn about all this in your Galactic Politics class.” Obi-Wan’s words drew a soft groan from Anakin, who sensed he would soon be ordered back to completing his evening’s coursework. “Speaking of Galactic Politics, I believe you have assignments for that class to finish tonight before it’s time for you to sleep.” 

“I can finish them quickly,” Anakin muttered, kicking at an empty snack wrapper that had somehow managed to land on the floor of the balcony. He was proud of how he had progressed from the bottom of his classes when he arrived at the Temple to the very top. “I’m very smart, Master.” 

“And so modest too.” Obi-Wan’s gentle hand on his shoulder nudged him back inside the Temple to resume his studies after this all too brief respite. “It’s a marvel you don’t need more lessons in that.”


End file.
